HTC's CEO says LTE phones coming in 2011, will support NFC, too

HTC CEO Peter Chou recently spoke with the GSMA (those are the folks who put on Mobile World Congress) and talked a tad about LTE phones. They're definitely on the way, though not before sometime next year (that's a surprise to no one), and the U.S. is likely to get them first because (to the surprise of everyone) we're actually ahead of the game on LTE. Said Chou:

"We are working on an LTE device for next year, 2011. We think that the U.S. mobile operator will be taking some lead and pushing 4G in the U.S. market. But, however, we are seeing the rest of the world will be deploying LTE networks in 2011. Could be the second half of 2011."

One of those phones is likely to be the HTC Mecha (possibly to be the Incredible HD on Verizon), which you see above. Chou also mentioned that HTC phones will incorporate NFC (near-field communications) mobile payment systems. Again, an expected feature, which we're seeing first in the Samsung Nexus S.